The Careful Undressing of Love

by Corey Ann Haydu

Overview

The girls of Devonairre Street have always been told they’re cursed. Any boy they love is certain to die too soon. But this is Brooklyn in 2008, and the curse is less a terror and more a lifestyle accessory—something funky and quaint that makes the girls from the shortest street in Brooklyn special. They wear their hair long and keys around their necks. People give them a second look and whisper “Devonairre” to their friends. But it’s not real. It won’t affect their futures.
 
Then Jack—their Jack, the one boy everyone loved—dies suddenly and violently. And now the curse seems not only real, but like the only thing that matters. All their bright futures have suddenly gone dark.
 
The Careful Undressing of Love is a disturbing and sensual story of the power of youth and the boundless mysteries of love set against the backdrop of Haydu’s brilliantly reimagined New York City.


From the Hardcover edition.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780399186745
Publisher:	Penguin Young Readers Group
Publication date:	01/31/2017
Sold by:	Penguin Group
Format:	eBook
Pages:	288
File size:	849 KB
Age Range:	14 - 17 Years

About the Author

Corey Ann Haydu is the critically acclaimed author of several novels for young readers novels, including OCD Love Story, which earned her a Publishers Weekly Flying Start. Her books have been Junior Library Guild, Indie Next, and BCCB Blue Ribbon selections. Corey lives in Brooklyn with her dog, her fiancé, and a wide selection of cheese.
www.coreyannhaydu.com


From the Hardcover edition.

Read an Excerpt

Chapter 1.

Angelika grabs my face, stares into my eyes, and looks for signs of love.

Her hands are cool and stronger than I remember. It’s not the first time she has pressed them against my cheeks. She leans in so close I can smell leathery Aramis cologne on her neck. She wears it every day—says it reminds her of her late husband. It is a Devonairre Street smell. Like freshly watered mint and basil that I planted in the garden or just-smoked cigarettes on Charlotte’s stoop or my mother’s chemical hairspray.

I keep my eyes open and on Angelika, but I’m aching to slide my sunglasses over my face and disappear.

I don’t like the oversoft, worn texture of her hands or the way I can feel her wedding ring folded beneath her wrinkles.

She turns my face this way and that, like love might be hiding under my chin or behind my ear. She brings her fingers close to my eyes, pulling at them from below so they open a little wider. I shift my gaze skyward. Someone tied balloons to the rusting garden gate for the Shared Birthday, which comes every year at the beginning of April, and a few of them have freed themselves and are floating up, up, and away.

I think I wouldn’t mind being a red balloon against a blue Brooklyn sky, looking down over Devonairre Street.

Angelika moves a hand to my forehead. Beside me, Delilah sighs. She’s next. Angelika’s eyes close and her lips purse and she tilts her ear to the ground like she’s listening for an earthquake.

When her eyes open, she’s beaming. From a certain angle she looks almost young, but most of the time she looks even older than her seventy-five years. That’s what a lifetime on Devonairre Street does to a person, I guess.

I love it here in spite of Angelika and her minions and the crazy things they believe. Or maybe because of them.

She pats my cheek. It’s almost a whack. There’s power behind it. “Good girl,” she says before looking over at my mother. “Lorna’s not in love.” Her Polish accent lilts on the word love so it sounds like luhf. The accent itself is a mystery—she was born on the street to a Polish mother and an American father, but her voice carries her mother’s history instead of her father’s or her own.

When we ask her about it, Angelika only shrugs.

“I am my mother’s daughter,” she says. “We are all our mothers’ daughters, are we not?”

With Angelika, the only answer we are allowed is yes.

And it’s true. Or it is for me. I look at my mother. She raises her eyebrows and lets her eyes laugh while the rest of her stays serious. I echo the look. I’m always a little bit scared and a little bit delighted during the Shared Birthday.

“There is not even the littlest bit of love on your daughter,” Angelika says to my mother, who is across the garden, past the bench and the waterless fountain, by the opposite gate. My mother nods like it matters; Angelika nods back and pats the top of my head, telling me to step away so that the next girl can step forward.

Editorial Reviews

10/31/2016
Lorna’s Brooklyn street is great—everyone looks out for each other, especially in hard times. But it’s also cursed: when a woman on Devonairre Street loves a man, he dies young. Lorna and her friends only half believe in this curse, even though all of their mothers are widows, but when Lorna’s best friend Delilah’s boyfriend is killed, they can’t make light of it any longer. Haydu (Making Pretty) sets this story in a slightly counterfactual version of New York City, with Times Square as Ground Zero and a lingering focus on memorializing the victims and their families, rather than a retaliatory war. Lorna’s father died in “the Bombing,” as did the father of her friend and neighbor Cruz. She was 11, he was 12, and now—nearly seven years later—their friendship is starting to feel like love. There is a lot of dramatic potential, but it never fully pays off. Is the curse real? Can it be averted? By what sacrifices? Haydu offers no answers or resolution, and after a long buildup, the ending is both sudden and unsatisfying. Ages 14–up. Agent: Victoria Marini, Irene Goodman Literary. (Jan.)

Publishers Weekly

"The Careful Undressing of Love is a book you relax into. For the first few pages, you’re picky, trying to sort Haydu’s magical world from our real one, and then it just takes you over. It’s weird until it’s not, and then it’s an examination of love and legacy and family, and the things girls do when we back them into corners and blame them for being there in the first place."—#1 New York Times bestselling author E. K. Johnston 

"Haydu explores such themes as differingexpressions of grief, destiny versus free will, the unexamined expectation thata girl will love a boy, and the interrelation (or lack thereof ) between sex and love.The slight magical realism and parallel-world setting add to this wrenching novel’s lyricism—and make the pain somewhat easier to bear."—The Horn Book Magazine

"A carefully layered exploration of the age-old question, "Is it better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all?"—Kirkus 

"Both straightforward and lyrical, this is a compelling read, a decidedly ambiguous portrayal of love that will resonate with those tired of formulaic romances."—Booklist

"Heartbreakingly beautiful and haunting, Haydu holds your heart in her hands as you travel through the pages of this story."—Romantic Times, Top Pick.

"The Careful Undressing of Love is sad and strange and beautiful. I will be marveling over Corey Ann Haydu's writing for days to come."—Johanna Albrecht, bookseller at Flyleaf Books, Chapel Hill, NC.

Praise for Corey Ann Haydu
★ "Haydu explores a sweet, unconventional romance alongside her characters’ well-known (but little-understood) disorder. Heartwarming, frequently funny, and wholly honest, this debut novel is, well, compulsively readable." — Horn Book, starred review of OCD Love Story
 
★ “Witty, affecting, and ferociously individual."
— BCCB, starred review of OCD Love Story
 
“Tender, wise, and heartbreakingly lovely, this story is as brilliant as a stolen star, and every bit as magical. Prepare to be enchanted.” 
— Katherine Applegate, Newbery-award winning author on Rules for Stealing Stars
 
★ “Haydu masterfully portrays the stress of living with an alcoholic parent…. A well-crafted blend of realism and fantasy. Give to fans of Holly Goldberg Sloan’s Counting By 7s and Sarah Weeks’s So B It.”
-School Library Journal, starred review of Rules for Stealing Stars

From the Publisher

11/01/2016
Gr 9 Up—Lorna Ryder is a Devonairre Girl, identifiable by her long hair and the keys she wears around her neck. It's 2008, and she and her mother live in Brooklyn, on Devonairre Street, which has supposedly been cursed ever since World War II, when none of the street's men returned home. Women living on Devonairre are warned from childhood that loving a man or boy will doom him to an early death, and this seems to have come true for Lorna's mother as well as for the other Devonairre women who lost husbands in The Bombings, anonymous terrorist strikes on New York City much like those on 9/11. The accidental death of Jack, the boyfriend of one of the Devonairre Girls, seems only to prove the curse's validity. The young women are told that they must perform certain rituals and behave in certain ways (thus the long hair, the keys, and more) in order to mitigate the curse's effects. But as Lorna and her mother both fall in love, they begin to question whether the curse is real, and they dare to defy the expectations of how they should behave. This is an often lyrical reflection on love, sexuality, death, mourning, and how human beings attempt to rationalize and control tragic events. The elements of magical realism and the beautifully detailed descriptions of an alternate version of New York City make this a standout. VERDICT This complex novel would be a good choice for a book discussion group or for those looking for a substantive, poetic YA read.—Kathleen E. Gruver, Burlington County Library, Westampton, NJ

School Library Journal

2016-10-19
Smelling of lavender tea and sporting long hair and skeleton keys around their necks, the Devonairre Street Girls have grown accustomed to the stares and whispers that follow them through the streets of New York. It's not surprising. After all, Lorna, Charlotte, Delilah, Cruz, and Isla are beautiful and different—and cursed, for legend holds that any boy who is loved by a Devonairre Street Girl will die. But it isn't until Delilah's boyfriend is suddenly killed that the curse becomes real for the girls, and for the first time, the inseparable friends must decide for themselves if they will allow it to determine their futures. Told through quiet Lorna's eyes, the lushly written first-person narrative is sensuous and rich, perfectly capturing the conflicting feelings of joy and fear that often accompany true love and meticulously laying out the peculiar terms of life on Devonairre Street. Haydu further enriches the novel with a diverse cast of compelling secondary characters, including Delilah, Lorna's African-American best friend, and their Puerto Rican friends Isla and Cruz (Charlotte is also white). However, it's the subtle yet powerful way that the novel addresses Lorna's struggle to find herself when others have defined her for so long that will especially appeal to teen readers grappling with their own issues of identity. A carefully layered exploration of the age-old question, "Is it better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all?" (Fiction. 14 & up)

Kirkus Reviews